Danish production company Zentropa has created a new low-budget genre scheme called Perestrojka.

The project will support seven genre films for a total of $12.8m (Euros 10m), or about $1.8m each.

Zentropa introduced the idea in Cannes and has fully financed the first film under the scheme, Anders Morgenthalers' Ekko. That film will be his follow-up to Directors Fortnight title Princess, which has sold to more than 20 countries.

The plan is to finance the low-budget films with 50% soft money from the likes of local film institutes, regional film funds and tax breaks. New Danish Talent will be one of the soft-money supporters of Ekko, with the rest of the funding coming from private investors and the German fund Shotgun.

Of the other six projects, two are close to shooting. In August, Omar Jarl Shargawis is planning to start shooting Ma Salama Jamil, a tale about Arab people in the West. Oil-rig thriller The Crud is likely to start shooting in Poland around the same time.

Perestrojka will also support Matthew Gaynes' The Refugees, which re-imagines the Anne Frank story with a mad scientist, and a feature by Tomas Gislason about young Americans who try to scam a mobile phone company for millions of dollars.